Snarling Badger

Grand Teton Brewing Company has been brewing bold, flavorful beers and serving them from large, beautiful bottles as part of its Cellar Reserve Series since March 2004.

We’ve always intended these beers to be wonderful fresh but also to be “cellarable”–to improve with months or even years of proper storage. Over the years we’ve been happiest cellaring our strong malty beers. That’s made selecting styles for our summer Cellar Reserve releases a challenge, since the best beers for cellaring are not always the best beers to enjoy on a hot summer’s day.

In Berliner Weisse we think we’ve found the perfect style for our summer Cellar Reserve. This north German wheat beer is traditionally brewed and released very fresh. It has a light body from the wheat and refreshingly tart acidity that make it a perfect summer thirst-quencher. Its lemony tartness is provided by a secondary fermentation with lactobacillus, the same microorganism that’s responsible for yogurt’s tang. That tartness increases and improves with age, so the people of Berlin are known to buy extra bottles to bury in their gardens for two years or more.

As usual with our Cellar Reserves, we’ve taken a traditional style and added our own twist. In this case we’ve tripled the strength over the traditional beer, which should only increase its aging potential. For the primary fermentation we used a traditional Bavarian hefeweizen yeast that produces soft notes of banana and clove. We followed that with lactobacillus and six months in conditioning to create a complex fruity acidity that compliments the soft sweet malt tones and a unique ale that is both fulfilling and refreshing.

ABV: 7.5%
IBUs: 15
Color: 5.9 Lov.